Bank of Albania approves sale of 11.25% EBRD stake in ProCredit Bank

TIRANA, Aug. 30 – Central Bank of Albania said Wednesday that it had approved the sale of a 11.25 percent stake of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to the local unit of international banking group ProCredit. “After the stake transfer, ProCredit Holding will hold 43.75% of the total bank’s assets of ProCredit Albania,” the central bank said in a statement. Other shareholders in ProCredit Bank Albania are the German bank for reconstruction and development KfW, Germany’s Comerzbank and the World Bank’s private investment arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC). ProCredit Bank Albania had a 2.7 million euro ($3.4 million) net profit on a 13.3 million euro net operating income for 2005, up 114% and 36%, respectively. It had total assets of 191.3 million euro at the end of 2005, up 31% from a year earlier. It currently runs a network of 19 branches countrywide.
The total assets of the Albanian banking system, which comprised 16 banks last year, reached almost 4.0 billion euro at the end of 2005.
ProCredit Bank Albania became part of the ProCredit group in 2003. The bank was previously named Fefad Bank, licensed by the central bank in 1999, and was owned by the Fefad Foundation, a joint initiative of the Albanian Finance Ministry, the EBRD, the IFC and German investment fund Internationale Micro Investitiones AG (IMI). ProCredit is the only bank in Albania rated by international ratings agency Fitch. The agency affirmed its ‘B+’ foreign currency issuer default rating (IDR) for the bank in June. The short-term foreign currency and the short-term local currency ratings were affirmed at ‘B’ and the local currency IDR at ‘BB-. The bank’s other ratings were affirmed at individual ‘D/E’ and support ‘4’.